


Boats A'Sailing Towards the Shore

by Simply8Steps



Series: Epics Pentathalon [4]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Post-Finale, shore fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-14 04:31:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11200491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Simply8Steps/pseuds/Simply8Steps
Summary: Felix sets up shop and waits with some help.





	Boats A'Sailing Towards the Shore

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on LJ 02/17/2013 to fulfill the "slash" ship leg of the bsg_epics community's pentathalon. Obviously, it was already late and over by then.

Felix knew he had all the time in the worlds now, in this life that was not quite life. It was peaceful, if unsettling. And he waits, with all the patience life had foisted onto him before death.  
  


* * *

  
He had woken on the shore of a stream, his mother’s face the first he sees, and for a moment, he was six and he’d just had a horrible nightmare-dream.   
  
“You’ve grown, Felix, since you went with the military.” The relief he felt at hearing her voice had him celebrating his arrival to the (apparently Elysian; he needed to get to the library to do some research) shore through a rather embarrassing, but well-deserved bout of weeping and sobbing into his mother’s shoulder. “My poor boy…” She had sighed then and began singing softly in his ear until the tears finally dried and the heaving slowed.   
  
He had straightened then, peering at his mother with wide eyes. “This is real…”  
  
“Yes, now, come home with me for a bit, before you go wherever you decide to go. I’m sure there will be people you want to visit, but for now, let me make you hot chocolate and dinner.”  
  


* * *

  
Felix hadn’t known what to think or do with himself those first few days. He knew from what he overheard that Baltar had been speaking of a river in the afterlife (but he had promised himself to never listen to another word that man said, or at least, never to believe again).  
  
However, there is so much peace abounding that it seems to settle onto and into him as easily as pain and grief had soaked into his very bones and missing parts before. The difference is almost terrifying, but he’s never really been one to look a gift horse in the mouth (not that it meant he wouldn’t spend all his time checking out all the other parts of the horse afterward), and so, the first few days after his ‘arrival’, as apparently, everyone calls it, he spends in the local library reading whatever is available and more. He goes looking for people to talk to, to talk with, and to question. He’s overjoyed more often than not to see familiar faces, but the only other person he collapses into tears upon seeing is when Dee’s clear, vibrant, alive eyes look up into his face, and she teases him about the trouble he got up to without her there.  
  
He wants to leave it at, “More than you know,” but as always, her concern makes her poke and prod, and he can no longer resent it even, the sheer amount in which she cares – about everyone, and he grabs hold of her and chokes out his confessions and his guilt and all the ugly feelings he’s been trying to hide here, in the home of the gods and blessed – apparently (he still doesn’t quite believe – it’s not always about seeing).  
  
She whispers comforting words in his ears, not because she says that everything is okay or that he was justified, but by giving him truths and acceptances. “I’m not sure what I would have done in your place, and I’m glad to have never found out. You were never one to stand and do nothing, Felix – that’s your form of courage, and gods, you used it to save all our asses enough times for several lifetimes.”  
  
He thanks her in a broken voice, not assuaged but bolstered.  
  
She keeps him company, acting as his assistant carpenter, when he decides to build a small boathouse on the shore. “For fishing,” he explains simply. After so much complexity in life, simple sounded just about perfect now.  
  
An art form of patience.  
  
Dee just smiles with quiet acceptance, she’s doing some waiting of her own after all.  
  


* * *

  
They lose track of time as they decide to attach a small cottage to the side of the boathouse. It’s quiet, and no one disturbs their work. The occasional visitor drops by at times, sometimes it is just to deliver small snippets of news from new arrivals. Once, it is a smirking Starbuck leading a gaggle of schoolchildren to cannonball into the lake from the newly built small dock.   
  
“Corrupting the little ones already, Starbuck? They better not catch any colds, or the teachers will flay you alive, airlocks or not!”  
  
“Oh psssh! It’s not that cold yet…”  
  
“Kara, you’re scaring the fish away. How am I supposed to run a fishing getup from here, if you scare them all away?”  
  
“Bribe them back with food. I don’t know. Never had any patience for fishing.” She emphasizes the last point with an exaggerated face of disgust.  
  
Dee splashes water into her face, and somehow or other the entire day of work devolves into a splash fight in the lake shallows with Gaeta and schoolchildren facing off against the two women.  
  


* * *

  
The air had just turned brisk when Gaeta is finally putting the dock to its actual use, lounging low in a lawn chair, with a slack line running into the shallow waters – hoping to attract a few small bites. He’s thinking of starting a natural organism catalogue for this place, wherever it is. Perhaps creating a sporting guide for any future or coming fisherman. Unfortunately, fishing had never actually been something Felix actually did in his previous life, at least, not in any serious manner.  
  
His mind doesn’t let go easily, and he commonly finds his slack line tensed in his hand by one stray thought or another.  
  
He tries to learn to focus on not focusing, and perhaps that is how he first misses those crisp footsteps that wander up on the frosted grass behind his dock. The arms that wrap around his neck as well as the comfortingly soft kiss in his hair however, are anything but unnoticeable.  
  
“I’ve missed you.”  
  
“I know, me too.”  
  
“Fishing? Really?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I don’t know. It’s just not something you’ve ever mentioned.”  
  
“I had the time. I was waiting for you to join me. Thought you might enjoy this hobby – all your patience and all that. We can try building hobby train and tram sets next if you like.”  
  
“That sounds just about perfect.”  
  
“Just about?”  
  
“Well, where’s the bed?”  
  
Felix smiles into Louis’ lips and jerks his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the cottage's attache’. “No bunkmates either.”  
  
“It’s quiet here.”  
  
“Yeah, it is.”   
  
They left the words at that, choosing to save their breath instead for some other more warmth-producing activities.

  
  
**_Fin._ **


End file.
